Abstract

There is a tradition in sports history of expressing concern that the field isin danger of losing sight of wider historiographical questions and issues.Such warnings stretch back to, at the very least, James Walvin in the veryfirst issue of the British Journal of Sports History, but as recently as 2013Paul Ward claimed that ‘those concerned with the welfare of sport historyhave seen its ghettoisation as a particularly problematic’.1 Sports historiansshould be more willing, so such criticisms go, to engage with ‘mainstream’history (mainstream history presumably being social, political andeconomic). Without wishing to dredge up these old points of contention,countervailing lines of reasoning have normally taken one of two forms.Firstly, as Richard Holt warned in 1996, in actuality there is sometimesthe risk that sports historians attempt to provide so much context that‘mainstream’ historical backgrounds swallow sports history whole.2Secondly, it remains important to consider how boundaries of sport aremaintained via its clubs and institutions, and part of this process involvesthe demarcating of sport and its histories as distinct to other leisure forms.To put it bluntly, why shouldn’t there be room in sports history for studiesconcerned with sport and its own specificities? Yet even with argumentsand counter-arguments so well-rehearsed, the debate never seems farfrom resurfacing.